Dr Tu is currently a postdoctoral research fellow in Prof. Conor Evans’ lab at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital & Harvard Medical School. She received her Ph.D. from the Biomedical Engineering Department at Texas A&M University in 2021. During her doctoral research, she specialized in using Raman spectroscopy to detect biomarkers in biological fluids. Her current research focuses on coherent Raman imaging, specifically Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS), and its applications in studying the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of topical dermatological formulations.

Determining topical product bioequivalence with stimulated Raman scattering microscopy.

Stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) microscopy has unique capabilities enabling continuous, high spatial and temporal resolution and quantitative imaging of drugs within the skin. In this presentation, we will use an example to show its application in studying of the topical dermatological formulations. Specifically, we developed an approach based on SRS and a polymer-based standard reference for the evaluation of topical product bioequivalence (BE) in human skin ex vivo. BE assessment of tazarotene-containing formulations was achieved using cPK parameters obtained within different skin microstructures. The establishment of BE between the RLD and an approved generic product was successfully demonstrated. Another formulation containing polyethylene glycol as the vehicle was demonstrated to be not bioequivalent to the RLD. Compared to using the SRS approach without a standard reference, the developed approach enabled more consistent and reproducible results, which is crucial in BE assessment. The abundant information from the developed approach can help to systematically identify key areas of study design that will enable a better comparison of topical products and support an assessment of BE.